Book Review: “Eclipse Lake” By Mae Clair.

BOOK REVIEW: ECLIPSE LAKE By MAE CLAIR

About the Author

Mae Clair opened a Pandora’s Box of characters when she was a child and never looked back. Her father, an artist who tinkered with writing, encouraged her to create make-believe worlds by spinning tales of far-off places on summer nights beneath the stars.

Mae loves creating character-driven fiction in settings that vary from contemporary to mythical. Wherever her pen takes her, she flavors her stories with conflict, romance and elements of mystery. Married to her high school sweetheart, she lives in Pennsylvania and is passionate about writing, old photographs, a good Maine lobster tail and cats.

BLURB:

Small towns hold the darkest secrets.

Fifteen years after leaving his criminal past and estranged brother behind, widower Dane Carlisle returns to his hometown on the banks of sleepy Eclipse Lake. Now, a successful businessman, he has kept his troubled past a secret from most everyone, including his seventeen-year-old son.

But memories in small towns are bitter and long.

Ellie Sullivan, a nature photographer for a national magazine, has a habit of ping-ponging across the map. Her latest assignment leads her to Eclipse Lake where she becomes caught up in the enmity between Dane, his brother Jonah, and a vengeful town sheriff. When freshly-discovered skeletal remains are linked to an unsolved murder and Dane’s past, Ellie is left questioning her growing attraction for a man who harbors long-buried secrets.

MY REVIEW: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 An engaging, unpredictable Page-turner!

This is my first venture into the world of Author Mae Clair.

Eclipse Lake caught my attention, partly because of the excellent blurb, and partly because I rarely review anything remotely connected to Romance, and a Mystery Romance seemed a great place to start.

Having said that, I was utterly unprepared and seriously delighted by what lay between these beautifully written pages.

This author has a deceptively elegant writing style. Deceptive only in that the flow of words have iron hidden within the dialogue.

The conversations between the central characters are pivotal and the author utilizes that marvelous skill by allowing the characters souls, dreams, and despairs to be communicated clearly each time they speak.

Meet Dane Carlisle. This is a man driven. His complex layers are composed with intricate threads of sorrow and longing, regrets and secrets he has never revealed. He comes from a dark childhood and through the actions and intervention of a mentor he reveres, he establishes a company, and makes a great success of it. A promise to his dying wife finds he and his teenage son journeying back to Danes home town of Onyx, a place of dark and closely held secrets.

Meet, Jesse his adopted son, seventeen and beginning those years of questing against and questioning everything that touches their world. The growing respect and understanding between he and his father is a pure joy to read. It is neither rushed nor formulaic, these folks are permitted to breathe, bleed and suffer as they rediscover each other.

Meet Jonah, Dan Carlisle’s estranged brother. Jonah is an angry man, his brother and he have a history, and his resentment of his brother Dane is both palpable and pivotal to this well thought out plot.

Meet Ellie: Successful photographer on assignment to Onyx. Enter the romantic element, and I must say I was delighted at the endearing and memorable way the growing love between she and Dan Carlisle is handled.

Combine all the splendid ingredients with the Sheriffs long missing daughters body being discovered, fingers being pointed, and nasty gossip doing its usual harm; that will launch all the characters into the unexpected conclusion.

Suffice it to say that that conclusion is a jaw dropper! I am now firmly committed to reading many more of this talented authors works.

Wow! Soooz! What a delight to discover this wonderful review of Eclipse Lake. I am humbled and honored by your marvelous take on my writing and characters. And, of course, I’m blown away that you enjoyed it so much. Thank you for sharing! You made my day! 🙂